ned him to
cigarettes, and that he mustn't quit them or he'd shatter the
foundations of our domestic integrity--he'd have died in cheerful
smoke--very soon after a time when he says I saved his life. All he
wanted was some excuse to go on smoking. Most people are
so--slothful-souled. But remember, don't advise your friend in town. Her
asking advice is a sign that she shouldn't have it. She is not of the
coterie that Paul describes--if you don't mind Paul once more--'Happy is
he that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth.'"

There had come to the woman a vast influx of dignity--a joyous increase
in the volume of that new feeling that called to her husband. She would
have gone back, but one of the reasons would have been because she
thought it "right"--because it was what the better world did! But
now--ah! now--she was going unhampered by that compulsion which galls
even the best. She was free to stay away, but of her own glad, loyal
will she was going back to the husband she had treated unjustly, judged
by too narrow a standard.

"Allan will be so astonished and delighted," she said, when the coupe
rolled out of the train-shed.

She remembered now with a sort of pride the fine, unflinching sternness
with which he had condemned divorce. In a man of principles so staunch
one might overlook many surface eccentricities.

CHAPTER XII

THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND

As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of
the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs.
Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable
feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she
was.

The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan's
face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing
from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal.
During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each
other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had
paused before her.

"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys
go back there to have it out!"

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to
tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened
duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to
Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a
slow